


Ruffled Feathers

by TheTartWitch



Category: Naruto
Genre: Accusations of Witchcraft, Angry Villagers, Beheading, Execution, Gen, M/M, Medusa's Myth Was Used Here, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Witchtrial-bashing, witch trial
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 00:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4897738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iruka Umino, apprentice of the Royal Explosives Master, is caught practicing his trade for the entertainment of children, is dragged to the public square, tied to a post, and beheaded in front of the town's population, most of the guards, and the man he loves who will now never know the truth. <br/>But after his head has rolled, something beautiful emerges from a body that is now an empty shell...<br/>I will try for accuracy but rest assured I am the laziest person you'll ever read the works of. Cheers.<br/>Oh yeah, and it's a bit dark so don't read it as a bedtime story. It's supposed to get romantic, I think...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruffled Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers. Finishing chapters for other stories as we speak, but got bored so: Cheers.

_“I am convinced it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear… that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.”_ –Rabbi Harold Kushner

Prologue: Executions and Fear of a God

 

“Umino Iruka, apprentice to the King’s Royal Explosives Master, has committed the most heinous of treasons: defying the word and law of our Lord and our King, practicing the forbidden arts, and cursing the children of our people with black magic! Shall we continue to let this stand?” The announcer cried, his arm sweeping out to indicate the whole of the stage behind him. Umino Iruka, the accused, was tied with a brilliant fisherman’s knot to a short pole anchored in the ground. He knelt before the crowd of peasants with a desperate expression; explanations had been said and begging had already fallen from his lips, and nothing more would come forth; such was the way of this impromptu ‘jury’. Denial was a sign of horrendous guilt, because it meant the defendant felt the need to excuse their actions with most-likely-falsified information. He was merely lucky they hadn’t decided on the Floating Test. That would have been a slow death, and painful to boot.

At the edges of the crowd, guards had started to take notice of the crowd’s prisoner and upon realizing it was in fact Umino-san, the Royal Explosives Master’s kind apprentice and servant, they immediately sent word to the castle’s inhabitants, warning them of such dire happenings. An execution was about to play out, and they refused to allow the ending to become a reality. They began to push their ways through the throng, shoving people out of the way in their effort to reach the raised platform that doubled as an execution stand or a stage for the people’s plays.

Iruka’s eyes were trembling, his pupils much too large in the dying evening light.

“Before God, we rid this sinner of his body, the means to practice such fiendish arts!” The announcer was posturing, raising the axe in his hand as a symbol of his faith and devotion. At the edges of the crowd, the castle’s guard had begun forcing its way towards the stage. Iruka let himself shudder in a breath before letting it out with all the bile in his throat. _They’re going to kill me; oh please let him cut it all the way off, I don’t want to die in pain. Please, if there’s anybody who’d listen to the prayers of a man like me, show mercy to a wretched soul…?_

His eyes catch on a familiar uniform; one sewn up with the badges given for honor and leadership and the protection of the people and the king, and Iruka swallows his scream, because surely it is the utmost cruelty, to have to die before the man he swore he loved (though never to that man’s face, as to love another man was to tell the hypocrites they were idiots as well as bigots), the head of the guard, Hatake Kakashi. Tears drip into a reflective puddle on the rotten wood beneath him, and he tries not to look inside it.

The steel of the axe bites into his neck and glints when it’s raised into the sky. The guards shout but the announcer, convinced he is doing his sacred duty to his God and his king, lets the axe drop with all his strength. And Iruka’s head falls from his body and rolls right to the announcer’s feet, inciting a screamed litany of verses and quotes from a book more popular than any other because _Iruka’s eyes are open_ and _they blink in the falling sunlight_.

The body jerks violently as the head’s mouth opens and the angry roar of an animal shatters the crowd. Iruka’s corpse wiggles in a grotesque dance, sending blood to splatter in a dot-to-dot pattern across the priest’s face. “Witch!” the people yell. Children cry, half because Iruka was beloved and half because the fear of the unknown is striking its hold in the mold of their souls, carving a resting place inside the children of murderers.

A hoof forces its way out of the body’s neck, tearing skin and forcing the gleaming pearl of the spinal column to the side as the body bursts open wide. A caribou’s strong form rises out of the gory mess, antlers trussed with intestines like tinsel on a tree and eyes huge and brown. The head swings, thrusting the wide rack on its head into the crowd. The beast rears onto its hind legs, front forced into the air, and behind the creature monstrous white osprey’s feathers, tipped with grey and cream and shadows, flare open with force.

Threatened, the beast unfurls wings from its back and flaps them once, shedding the unbecoming coating of gore and death as it rises elegantly into the air and wheels, heading for the mountains south of the kingdom. No arrows follow it, though eyes stayed pinned until the figure can no longer be seen. When the people turn back to the stage to view the mangled corpse, there’s nothing to greet them but the executioner, waving his axe and raving about how the body vanished into golden smoke and laughed as it flowed into the sky. He is promptly arrested and was hanged for the public murder of an innocent man.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically the picture I found is a strange version of the Thunderhawk, a mythical bird-like creature that I believe is Native American in origin. Please let me know if any of my knowledge is false. ;)  
> for some reason i am unable to post the picture link or find it anywhere, so i'll just try to send it to anyone who asks. :)


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